Roosevelt would not ever after be his devoted friend. Once he had admitted a person to the circle of his acquaintance, he generously did what he could to advance his interests, for friendship to him meant more than mere companionship. Many men and women, unknown and struggling for recognition as artists, writers, or speakers, have Mr. Roosevelt to thank for giving them the assistance necessary to their success. He took pleasure in publicly commending worthy persons in his speeches and writings, and in a way that meant recommendation for them.

His comrades, tried and true, of his political battles, his life on the Dakota cattle ranges, in Cuba, along the lion and elephant trails of Africa, and in that desperate expedition down the River of Doubt, were remembered and given ample praise in his books. Nothing pleased him more than to correspond with men who had done things. He discussed art with Augustus Saint-Gaudens, natural history with John Burroughs, literature with Owen Wister, history with John Morley, and statecraft with

James Bryce, John Hay, and Henry Cabot Lodge.

He gave to his friends but he took something from them, for friendship was not a half but a whole partnership. He highly prized the friendship of Jacob A. Riis, considering him the right sort of a reformer; and he secured from him much valuable information about social conditions. While Mr. Roosevelt was president of the New York Police Board, the two frequently made the rounds of the tenement-house district together, sometimes spending an entire night in the investigation. In this way he obtained the foundation for his sound philosophy of social reform. He called Jacob Riis the best American he had known, though he was born in a foreign country.

His active interest in athletics meant that there was always a place in his affections for men of athletic prowess. He claimed the friendship of the famous prize fighters, Battling Nelson, Bob Fitzsimmons and John L. Sullivan. Fitzsimmons once presented him with a horseshoe made in the form of a pen

holder. And John L. Sullivan, when Roosevelt left for Africa, gave him a gold mounted rabbit's foot for luck, which, as Roosevelt tells in his autobiography, he carried throughout the entire trip in which good fortune attended him. Johnny Hayes, winner of an international Marathon race, was also one of his valued friends, and he commended him to young men seeking physical development as an example of a successful athlete.

Friends that he made in the cattle country, during the days he lived there as a ranchman, he kept as long as he lived; and the names of Sylvane and Joseph Ferris and William Merrifield are closely associated with the stirring story of his adventures in the Bad Lands as so vividly told by Hermann Hagedorn. When he was President, he gave all three of the men commissions under the Government. He liked to associate with men who had been face to face with hard physical reality, for he was thus helped to understand the purpose and feelings of the average American. He considered them typical American citizens, men who could

be depended on to fight valiantly for the national honor should the time come. Seth Bullock was sheriff of the Black Hills district while Roosevelt was ranching in that country, and for him he came to have a very friendly feeling. Bullock was a good example of a rough-and-ready native of the soil; and after Mr. Roosevelt had spent a year hunting in Africa and visiting the prime ministers and monarchs of Europe, he cabled for Seth Bullock and his wife to come to London, feeling, "That I just had to meet my own people, who spoke my neighborhood dialect."

The White House was always open to cowboy acquaintances and to members of his Rough Rider regiment. His Rough Riders looked on him much as they would a father who would be able to get them out of troubles in which indiscretion sometimes involved them.

William H. Sewell and Will Dow, his guides in the Maine woods, and later managers of one of his ranches in Dakota, were lifelong friends.

The fact that Roosevelt made friends and

lasting ones not only among notable statesmen, writers, and diplomats but among cowboys, guides, and soldiers indicates the democracy of his outlook. He did not avoid the friendship of the wealthy by inheritance but, on the other hand, he did not seek it; for it had been his experience that inheritors of great wealth were not workers and contributed nothing to the state. They lacked the hardier virtues, and were rendered incapable, by the very fact of their inheritance, of carrying through a task that involved heavy responsibility. Yet he did not condemn the rich man because he was rich. He directed his attack against wealth when it was hoarded or used to excite the envy of the poor. He struck to the root of the evil when he explained that the greatest harm resulting from swollen fortunes was the envy and hate they engendered on the part of the poverty-stricken. Wrongdoing was wrongdoing whether the offender was a millionaire or a pauper. Good and evil are found in all grades of society. Proof of character lies in conduct not in earthly possessions.